No More Than This
by NoteEmmy
Summary: Kaiba's rushing to get work done finally puts an end to things. But he's rather insistent on getting his way. When he can't, he exits the only way he knows how.


Sometimes Kaiba wondered if firing his entire tech staff and just doing all the work himself was the more prudent way to go about things. It felt like he was left doing more work than he needed to most days regardless. He had other things to attend to. When tech called up about something going haywire or plans not being built the right way or something breaking down he got angrier and angrier. Everyone in his building was incompetent in some manner but tech was supposed to be good at their jobs. And lately they hadn't been standing up at all. He'd have to think seriously about firing the lot.

This time they'd sent up an entirely new mach 5 VR Pod. Latest design. They were being set up at the Kaiba Land parks in Japan. The one being left in his office, though, had some sort of electrical problem. It should have been easy enough for his team to fix it but apparently only he could be left to do the work. It was unbelievable and completely frustrating. He had a stack of papers on his desk and he really had no time for this. Yet they'd insisted because there were only two others. The lines would be long and they'd lose out on not only money but the chance for more people to play them.

He couldn't be bothered with trekking all the way to the park to do this, nor could he be bothered to send himself all the way down to the lab. All of it was a waste of time. So he had them drag it up here. He hadn't cared how they had, just that it got there without any scratches. That, at least, they seemed to be capable enough of doing. And why wouldn't they? They were dumping their job off on someone else. Of course they'd manage to at least do that. Useless, the lot of them.

Kaiba's tool kit was sprawled out on the floor after he'd accessed the panel in the side. At least he hadn't had to jack the pod up to get inside the bottom. Whatever it was he'd worked out enough that he could tell the problem was from the back left. After sitting in it and loading it up he'd assessed the cause behind the glitching and weird graphics- headache inducing ones. They might have killed anyone lesser, a child especially. But the lab would have called up if someone had died.

Either they hadn't even tried or they got lucky. He wasn't sure which one he cared more to vote towards. After getting out he felt a swirl of dizziness also caused by the messy code that had been broken. It didn't stop him, though. He didn't have time to let it. So instead he knelt down, pair of pliers in his mouth for working out wiring and chips while he rooted around in his own machine. Something had knocked something else loose and he was determined to find out who exactly was treating his pods with such brutishness. After he fixed it, of course.

Getting his hand further into the back of the machine he finally saw a mess of wiring that was linked the entirely wrong way. He hadn't built all the pods by hand, of course, so that meant that the tech center had screwed the building of this one up in the first place. It got his jaw to clamp further in anger before his long fingers wrapped around the problem area. Immediately he felt a jolt right up his skin and into his spine.

The headache got worse. He knew at that point he should have found his gloves but he was just on too tight a schedule. It was only a small shock. If he could keep his initial instinctive reaction to flinch away down he could get them and put them in the right spots. So without any more thought than that he reached for them again.

With the warmth of the first one running through the machine the second one was greatly worse. He thought he heard the crack of his own back before he even hit the wall. He smelled the smoke coming out of the machine immediately. At least he thought he did. The pain in his head intensified as he struggled- no… he wasn't moving on his own. His body was convulsing. Probably with the electricity running through it. He wasn't sure how to stop it. Momentary and very rare panic set into his bones and ran wild through his mind before everything went quiet and dark.

Kaiba wasn't sure when exactly he came to, how long he'd been out. Nothing seemed to hurt, though, which was odd. Electrical shocks tended to stick in the muscles quite terribly. And he'd hit the wall, too, hadn't he? Getting up he couldn't really make out most of the office. It seemed pitch black, which was an inaccurate thing to be seeing. Even if all the lights in his office were off the city would have given off enough glow to light up most of it. The weird black shadows of the room almost made it feel like the city was responsible for the shoddy lighting, but the outside through the window was even darker than his office.

He started wondering if he'd knocked something loose in his head. Or maybe he was having a stroke. Either was possible. It might have explained the lack of pain. Or the lack of seemingly anything that would have been normal as he moved to the center of what used to be his office. The room felt hollower than usual, devoid of anything he really cared about. It wasn't that he'd ever put work into making his office feel personal to him. But something about this was off.

It became much more so when a glow settled into the front of the office, coming from the door. Not underneath it, though, like light from outside might. The entire door had started to take on a glow. It was then he knew he must have really damaged his brain. A man walked right through it though it was closed, dressed in white, and regarded him. Kaiba stood stiffly, sneering at him.

The man held his hand out. "Come with me."

Immediately Kaiba crossed his arms and leaned back in his stance, intent on not going anywhere. "Why should I?"

Paler blue eyes than his own settled on him, and the stranger only smiled. "Because I'm here to guide you to what has waited you."

None of this sounded like anything he ever wanted to be a part of. Instead it got a roll out of his eyes. "I was done with this bullshit years ago." This situation had Yuugi written all over it.

"You can't linger here. Your time in this world is over." Put straightly, which Kaiba may have appreciated any other day of the week. And then the man pointed to what seemed to be a very dead body lying on the floor.

Kaiba's own. And while anyone else might have paled he instead looked at his own weakness, straight faced, and, to put it mildly, disappointed in himself. Either for going crazy or for succumbing to something so simple as dying through electric shock. After everything else that had tried to kill him… "I'm not going anywhere." He said after just a few seconds and looked the man in white over again. "Put me back."

Kaiba Seto certainly didn't have time to be dead.

"I cannot." The stranger seemed to be getting frustrated.

"Then you're useless to me." He walked back over to the body, trying to see if he could prod at it or find any way to fix things himself. Unfortunately his best efforts were only that his hands went right through anything he tried touching. "Tch."

The man appeared at his side. "Come with me. Now." An order, no less.

Kaiba glared. "You think you can tell me what to do?" No situation, none on earth, could anyone ever command Kaiba to do anything. Not anymore.

"Some are waiting for you on the other side." Most notably his Pharaoh. If he delayed any longer there might have been problems. But what could he do with an uncooperative soul? Shaadi had been warned this was likely to be frustrating but whatever he'd thought before he had been wrong.

The CEO stood, brushing off his jacket as if it had dirt all over it. He had no reason to entertain this ridiculous seizure induced garbage. But even he wasn't that stupid. As much as he disliked it. "Who says I want to go anywhere?" He certainly hadn't been planning on an afterlife.

"No one. But you should go, regardless." Changing the wording around to keep it from sounding like he was commanding him. Whatever he could do to speed this up he would. And he held his breath as he watched Kaiba stride to the door.

He placed his hand on the handle, testing for temperature. He was mildly displeased when it was cold, for whatever reason that might have been. It wasn't that he was scared of death. He had had plans for it a long time. His will was up to date. Nothing bad would happen to the company. Mokuba was old enough … granted, just thinking about his little brother had him hesitating more than before. But what could be done? If he really was dead …

He shook his head. All of this was nonsense. Ridiculousness. He knew he had nowhere to go. But just going because someone said to wasn't his style.

"I'm going to go get security and have them escort you off my property." Said soundly as he opened the door, blinded by the sudden light, but moving forward anyway. His own way. It was the only way to do anything.

Even dying.


End file.
